Screenshot from youtube by Les Grossman NEW OFFICIAL CHANNEL / YouTube

Author and activist Cornel West managed to find common ground with conservative commentator Sean Hannity of all people during a discussion on Fox News this week concerning the upcoming mid-term elections.

As Americans prepare to cast ballots in early November, both West
and Hannity warned that voters should avoid being influenced by
attempts from both the left and right to play the race card this
Election Day.

The issue became a hot topic during an appearance on Hannity’s
Fox News program this week as political contenders are relying on
race in order to stoke the emotions in viewers who catch the
advertisements being played on TV and radio ahead of the upcoming
elections.

“This drives me crazy,” Hannity, well known to be a
Republican, told West after airing a series of clips from current
political adverts. “I’m a conservative. I believe we’re all
children of God.”

"You and I agree with that," West responded, adding that
it may "surprise a lot of people" that he considers
Hannity his brother.

"He is my brother," West said. "Why? Because we’re
human beings."

Yet while West agreed that the two have differences with regards
to certain issues, both found common ground when it came to
discussing racially-charged ads.

“Does that disgust you as much as it does me?” Hannity
asked of the race-centric ads. “That disgusts me."

“Well, I think that, as you know, I have a disgust in some
ways with both parties,” responded West, a Democrat, to the
ads played by Hannity. “The Republican Party has always
struck me as too mean-spirited when it comes to attitudes towards
the poor and the Democratic Party is too … empty in terms of not
taking a stand. But we just have to be clear: there’s one
standard. Stay in contact with the humanity of folks across the
board. No racist appeals.”

“We have to have a higher standard,” West added.
“Where is the integrity, honesty, decency across the
board?”

Nevertheless, West said he thinks African-Americans in the United
States will continue the tradition of overwhelmingly leaning left
this Election Day.

“There’s no doubt I think that black brothers and sisters
will vote disproportionally for a Democratic Party because they
still see in a Republican Party too many folk who when they talk
about black people, it’s a matter of black people themselves
bearing all the responsibility or most reasonability as opposed
to some of the societal institutions,” West said.

The activist’s remarks were made fresh off a recent stop in
Ferguson, Missouri where he was among a group of protesters
arrested last week during a demonstration outside of a local
police station in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown, an
unarmed, black teenager, two months ago.

“I don’t like seeing you arrested — you’re a friend of
mine,” Hannity said to West during this week’s segment.
“I would have bailed you out if I knew you were
arrested.”